The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Some network switches store incoming packets in a packet buffer, for example, while egress interfaces for the packets are identified by a packet processor and while the egress interfaces process other packets. Packets are later transferred from the packet buffer towards an identified egress interface. When multiple copies of a packet are to be transferred, for example, for a multicast or broadcast packet, a single copy of the packet is maintained in the packet buffer to be read by each of the egress interfaces through which the packet is to be transmitted.